The League of Frightened Men

"Yeah. I gathered that from the statements among his papers. You see, one thing that might help would be any evidence that when Hibbard left his apartment that Tuesday evening he had an idea that he might not be back again. I can't find any. I'm still looking. For instance, during the few days preceding his disappearance, did he make any unusual arrangements or give any unusual orders regarding his account here?" | Bowen shook the round thing that he used to grow his hair on. "No. I would have been told… but I'll make sure."

From a row on the wall behind him he pulled out a telephone, and talked into it.

He waited a while, and talked some more.

He pushed the phone back, and turned to me. "No, as I thought. There has been no transaction on Andy's account for over two weeks, and there were no instructions from him."

I bade him farewell.

That was a good sample of the steady progress I made that day in the search for Andrew Hibbard. It was a triumph. I found out as much from the other six guys I saw as I did from Ferdinand Bowen, so I was all elated when I breezed in home around dinner time, not to mention the fact that with the roadster parked on Ninetieth Street some dirty lout scraped the rear fender while I was in seeing Dr.

Burton. I didn't feel like anything at all, not even like listening to the charming gusto of Wolfe's dinner conversation – during a meal he refused to remember that there was such a thing as a murder case in the world – so I was glad that he picked that evening to leave the radio turned on.

After dinner we went to the office. Out of spite and bitterness I started to tell him about all the runs I had scored that afternoon, but he asked me to bring him the atlas and began to look at maps.

There were all sorts of toys he was apt to begin playing with when he should have had his mind on business, but the worst of all was the atlas. When he got that out I gave up. I fooled around a while with the plant records and the expense account, then I closed my affairs for the night and went over to his desk to look him over. He was doing China! The atlas was a Gouchard, the finest to be had, and did China more than justice. He had the folded map opened out, and with his pencil in one hand and his magnifying glass in the other, there he was buried in the Orient.

Without bothering to say good night to him, for I knew he wouldn't answer, I picked up his copy of Devil Take the Hindmost and went upstairs to my room, stopping in the kitchen for a pitcher of milk.